


like the holding of hands, like the breaking of glass

by prettydizzeed



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Author is trans, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Banter, Canon Compliant, Discussions of Past Trauma, Explicit Consent, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Road Trips, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Shocking I know, Trans Male Character, Trans Sam Wilson, we are Healing folks!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2020-07-08 02:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19861807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: “At least it isn’t a Bug,” Bucky says, and that’s really the only bright side to the absolute clusterfuck of the past few days other than the not being dead thing, isn’t it.Sam snorts. Pats the dashboard. Says, “Yeah, looks like your legs have a bit more space, huh.” Thinks better of reaching over to touch Bucky’s knee to prove it.Bucky glares at him, and all things considered, it’s almost comforting.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is of course from "Wasteland, Baby!" by Hozier
> 
> i swore i'd never write for marvel but then bucky looked at sam Like That in endgame and all previous promises went out the window

Sam slides his arms into the shield straps, feels it settle cool and solid against his back. He looks at Bucky. “Where to, Barnes?”

Bucky startles, glances at Steve and back to Sam. “Uh—I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, not a lot of options,” Sam says. “We could crash at Pepper’s—” Bucky snorts in clear disagreement, which is for the best, because floating around the idyllic cabin prior to Tony’s funeral had been a nightmare. _Not sure if it’d be more or less awkward if he was still alive_ , Sam had said in Bucky’s ear, and Bucky had elbowed him hard but laughed in spite of himself.

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” Sam agrees. “Clint and Wanda are at the farmhouse, which is probably getting kinda crowded, but it’s an option. Can’t just fuck off to space, unfortunately.” His tone is still easy, but it’s getting harder to keep out the panic and the shock. “I dunno,” he continues, “we could get a hotel and then head to DC. Or anywhere—is there someplace you’ve been dying to live?”

Sam has been meticulously ignoring Steve—who is still old, so that’s really looking like it isn’t a dream, or some temporary time-travel side effect, or any other desperate explanation besides the one Steve offered—but he can’t help but glance in Steve’s direction when he clears his throat before Bucky can respond. Force of habit; commanding presence and all that. “I feel like it makes the most sense for Captain America to be based in New York City,” Steve says. “More resources, and the history, and all.”

Sam bites back about twenty unproductive, sharp responses and instead says, “No offense, Steve, but all of our information on New York’s resources is outdated. Some more than others.”

“Yes, but it’s Captain America’s job to—“

Sam turns fully and meets Steve’s eyes for the first time since saying how happy he is for him, really. “Captain America,” Sam says, steady, even, measured, and nods in Bucky’s direction, “told him he was with him to the end of the line.”

Steve shuts up. Sam tells himself he doesn’t have time to fume over the fact that Steve’s expression is more resigned than remorseful.

“So that’s what’s gonna happen,” Sam continues softly. “I go where he goes.” Sam very pointedly does not look in Bucky’s direction, takes the lack of protests as a good sign.

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I know you think—”

“No, you don’t,” Sam interrupts. “You haven’t _seen me_ for, what, sixty years? Seventy? I don’t even know how long—I don’t even know where you _were_ —you sure as hell don’t know what I think or who I am.” He pauses, then says it anyway. “Which I guess makes us even, because I don’t know who you are now, either.” He looks at Bucky, who is looking at the ground, digging his fingernails into the seam of his prosthetic. Sam holds a hand out to Steve.

“Look, man, we need to go. You gave me the shield, so obviously at some point you thought I’d know what to do with it, how to deal with it. So now you’ve just gotta trust that version of yourself. And you’ve gotta trust me.”

Steve looks up at him, lips pressed together slightly, and nods, looking so much like the Steve Rogers that Sam knew only an hour ago that he has to clench his teeth against the grief. Steve shakes his hand, and Sam gives him as much of a smile as he can summon, then walks to Bucky and slowly, in a clear, predictable motion, reaches for the inside of his right wrist, rests his fingers there for a beat. Bucky lets go of his other arm and walks toward the car without a word.

They’re twenty minutes down some back road before either of them says anything. Sam feels kind of bad for just ditching Banner with only a glance toward the vehicle and a half-shrug, like, _you know how it is_ , but Banner had nodded like he did in fact know how it is, so Sam figures he can call him later to see whether he and Steve sorted out or ignored their feelings, and it’ll be fine. Or, well. Close enough to fine as things can get when, after your triumphant return from five years of apparently being dead, your super soldier friend decides that instead of his regularly scheduled time travel, he’s going to spend an entire lifetime in the past and then pass on the mantel to you with no warning. You know. Fine.

“At least it isn’t a Bug,” Bucky says, and that’s really the only bright side to the absolute clusterfuck of the past few days other than the not being dead thing, isn’t it.

Sam snorts. Pats the dashboard. Says, “Yeah, looks like your legs have a bit more space, huh.” Thinks better of reaching over to touch Bucky’s knee to prove it.

Bucky glares at him, and all things considered, it’s almost comforting. 

Sam clears his throat a few minutes later. “If this isn’t the time or place, that’s totally cool,” he starts, “but I saw your face when Strange said it’d been five years, and I was just wondering how you’re doing.”

“Yeah, I guess since Steve apparently isn’t gonna be leaving VA business cards on my pillow anymore, that’s your job now, huh.” Bucky is looking out the window. He runs a hand over his jaw, settles his chin on his palm. “Am I fucked up about it, more than half the planet already is, yeah. Do I wanna talk about it,” and here Sam is fully expecting a _fuck no_ , but Bucky presses his lips together for a half second and says, like it surprises him, “not right now.”

“Fair enough,” Sam says, and then, “I guess even Wakandan scientists can’t cure PTSD.”

Bucky laughs, raw and dry. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

Fury had given them the car. 

Well, Sam had shaken Fury’s hand just before the funeral, and after the funeral, Fury had disappeared, and Sam had stuck his hand in his left pocket and touched a set of keys instead of a much-unneeded Kleenex and made the reasonable assumption. 

There was an envelope in the glove box containing five hundred bucks in twenties, an index card with an address for a self-storage business in Vancouver, and a key with the number 43 stamped on it. 

“Wasn’t he dead, too?” Sam had asked, indignant, and Bucky had shrugged. “How the fuck.”

He has the feeling that it was meant for Nat, to be honest, but that wouldn’t explain the storage unit, since she’d been alive—she’d been _alive_ , fuck, and then she’d fallen to her death in some empty planet, not even a fucking headstone left behind. He thinks she might have liked that part, a bit, gone without a trace, no cover etched in marble, but. She still deserved—something. So much more.

Sam glances at the passenger seat. “What do you think, Barnes, impromptu trip to Vancouver?” 

Bucky looks away from the window long enough to meet his eyes. “You don’t have to keep letting me call the shots, you know.”

Sam snorts instead of saying that it’s not like he knows what else to do, that they didn’t exactly cover this kind of situation in his grad school counseling classes. “Who said anything about you calling the shots, man? I’m just trying to minimize the number of complaints I have to listen to. It’s gonna be a long enough drive as it is.” 

Bucky smiles, quick and raw, like it surprises him. Sam adds a mental tally— _Wilson: 1_ , _Devastating Grief: 0_. It might not be the most accurate, in the grand scheme of things, but it makes him feel better.

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky says. “Let’s go.”

They stop at a gas station to top off the tank and grab something that passes for food. Sam reaches across Bucky to shove the passenger door open; Bucky stays impossibly still, staring at where Sam’s biceps brush his chest.

“I’m driving,” Sam says with a smirk, “you get the gas.”

“I’m a hundred years old and grew up dirt poor in Brooklyn,” Bucky protests, “We walked everywhere. You think I know how to work one of these things?” He gets out the car, though.

“It’ll be a learning experience,” Sam calls, “Heard those keep the dementia at bay.” 

Bucky slams the door shut.

While he fills up the tank—with no issues; Sam wonders when in the last few years he drove a car, shuts the thought down before it leads to the well-worn question of what the fuck Bucky was doing while he and Steve searched for his ass—Sam texts Banner and asks him for Steve’s new number if he has it. If Steve has a phone, even.

Banner responds, just a string of ten numbers, and then a second message: _He’s going to stay with me for a bit. The two of you are welcome any time, but I understand if that isn’t a good idea right now._

It probably isn’t. Sam texts a thank you and then tries not to think about Steve. He ends up thinking instead about Banner saying “the two of you,” like he and Bucky are an obvious unit. 

Bucky opens the passenger door and tosses both a sub sandwich and a handful of change at Sam’s lap. Ten minutes later and back on the road, Sam’s sure he’s still sitting on at least three pennies when he realizes mid-bite that this is his usual order. Bucky hadn’t even asked.

Well. Maybe they’re something, at least. A team, rather than two-thirds of one.

*

Sam pulls up Spotify and puts on _Trouble Man_ , because he’s on a one-man mission to introduce culturally deprived super soldiers to decent fucking music. They sit in mostly silence through the album, interrupted only by the occasional GPS direction. Sam taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat, and Bucky nods his head along sometimes, so Sam figures he isn’t having too terrible of a time. 

The album ends and Sam distractedly notices that Spotify is starting auto-play. He wishes he’d been paying better attention, though, when he hears “oh, baby, now let’s—” and immediately grabs for his phone, too late and too obvious. Bucky’s been playing Candy Crush on Sam’s phone because he claims not to know how to download apps, because he’s a menace. (Steve had downloaded it to Sam’s phone in the first place, because he’s even more of one.)

Bucky immediately moves the phone out of Sam’s reach and holds it there. “I wanna listen,” he says petulantly, grinning. “Become cultured and shit. Learn about important milestones of the late 20th century—you know, the time when I was too brainwashed to buy a record.”

There’s not much that can be said to that, even though Sam knows Bucky’s just fucking with him. “Fine,” he sighs.

So that’s how Sam ends up sitting through all four minutes and seven seconds of “Sexual Healing” with Bucky next to him, trying to hide his shit-eating grin behind his metal hand while Sam keeps a death grip on the steering wheel and his eyes trained dead ahead.

Sam thinks he’s finally free when the song ends, but then Bucky readjusts in the seat, tapping Sam’s password into the phone, and says, “Okay, my turn.”

“I swear, Barnes,” Sam says through gritted teeth, “if this is the 30s equivalent of songs to set the mood, I will pull the car over right the fuck now.”

“That so?” Bucky asks, smirking, and Sam resists the urge to hit his head against the horn. 

“Maybe I’ll just swerve into a tree,” he says, and Bucky swallows.

“I’ve seen you in enough car crashes, Wilson. It’s not a good look for you.” His tone is joking, but his voice still manages to be serious, and Sam nods.

“Yeah, fine. Just don’t put on anything Steve and whatever-her-name-is were getting it on to in an alternate timeline.”

“Ugh,” Bucky says, shuddering, and starts a song, something instrumental and jazzy. It takes Sam a minute to place it, but when he does, he glares at him.

“You’re a little shit, you know that?”

Bucky grins. “What, you’re not gonna pull the car over? You talk a big game, Wilson; I’m disappointed there’s no substance to it.”

Sam rolls his eyes and keeps them firmly on the road instead of trying to examine Bucky’s suddenly inscrutable expression. He’s teasing, sure, but there’s something else there, something Sam’s not sure how to place.

When the last notes of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” fade out, Bucky switches it to Billie Holiday, and, well. Sam can work with that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had to add the tag "sharing a bed" for this chapter, please enjoy

“So how many days are we thinking here?” Sam asks, a bit belatedly. “It’s supposed to be around forty-five hours to Vancouver, so maybe forty-two by now if we’re lucky. We’re okay on funds, but I kind of wanted to get out of there so bad I didn’t think about stuff like how neither of us own any other clothes.” They really are okay on funds, even beyond Fury’s emergency envelope; Pepper had set him up with a bank account sometime in the chaotic and disconnected hours between Tony’s funeral and Steve’s return. “Call it a delayed salary,” she’d said, and Sam understood needing to stay busy, to _do_ something so maybe the grief would catch up a little slower, so he’d said thank you and taken the debit card and not asked too many questions. It wasn’t like she wasn’t richer than God, anyway, so if she wanted to throw a couple thousand dollars at him to ease her conscience, he wasn’t going to stop her. 

She hadn’t said anything about Bucky, which was to be expected. Sam just hoped he wasn’t going to have to wrestle with any 1930s toxic masculinity in order to buy the man a couple t-shirts.

Bucky shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, Walmart will have the same shit wherever we stop. And we can probably do it in four.”

He means four days, Sam realizes, and he gives him the best incredulous look he can manage without taking his eyes off the road. “That’s brutal. I’m not sure I can drive twelve hours a day four times in a row without going batshit.” 

Bucky rolls his eyes all exasperated, like, _how dare you think so little of me, man._ “We can switch off,” he says.

“Oh, what happened to Mr. We Walked Everywhere, uphill both ways BS? Do you even have a license?” 

“The only form of photo ID I’ve had for the past couple decades has been a wanted poster,” Bucky says, grinning. “Hasn’t stopped me.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” Sam says, shaking his head. “We’ll see.”

They make good time until around eight, when they pull into a Walmart parking lot somewhere in Ohio and haul their stiff bodies out of the car. Sam looks away as Bucky stretches, his shirt riding up along his stomach. 

Sam grabs a few boxes of protein bars, a 24-pack of bottled water, cheap multipacks of t-shirts and socks and underwear, a pair of jeans, a mini first aid kit, and a duffle bag. Bucky finds him in the hair care aisle as he’s wondering if Bucky’s even had enough experience with shampoo to have a preferred type; toothpaste, two deodorants, and two toothbrushes are in the cart by now, too. Floss, because the current state of their lives is as good a reason to prioritize dental hygiene as any. At least it’s something he has control over. 

Bucky unceremoniously dumps his armload into the grocery cart: what looks like at least four family-size bags of chips, a few bro tanks, underwear, jeans, a lightweight zip-up hoodie, some hair ties, candy. Probably some other stuff Sam can’t see and doesn’t particularly care about as long as they aren’t over budget. “You doing okay?” he asks instead of making a dig about it. Bucky nods instead of ribbing him for it. 

“The lights are fuckin’ bright, man. Still not used to that.” 

Sam nods, and puts shampoo and conditioner in the cart at random, figuring they can’t do much more damage than Bucky’s hair has already taken. He throws in a comb and heads to checkout. 

They’re over their agreed budget by $15. He doesn’t say anything about it. 

Once they’ve loaded their stuff into the car, Sam drives to the nearest motel, despite Bucky’s insistence that he’s perfectly capable of sleeping in the car. The bathroom is just sketchy enough that Sam wishes he’d bought flip-flops to shower in, but he deals with it, and feels pretty relieved to be clean up until the moment when he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and thinks, _That was my second time showering since dying._

He shakes himself. It’s not like he was ever washing off the dirt of the grave.

He gets dressed in a t-shirt and boxer briefs and walks into the room. “Bathroom’s open,” he tells Bucky while heading towards the duffle bag in search of a protein bar, “I left shampoo and stuff for you on the counter.”

Bucky nods, not quite looking at him, and gets up. They brush their teeth—Sam flosses, too, and what is the world coming to, man—at the same time after he’s done showering, both too tired to wait an extra three minutes, and it’s weirdly calming. He doesn’t even threaten to spit in Bucky’s hair. 

They’ve turned the lights out and are laying in their mildly uncomfortable twin beds when Bucky says, “Thanks for handling the responsible shit. Water and toothpaste and stuff. I do know how to, like, buy necessities, but. Reminds me of being on the run, I guess, rather than on the road.”

“No problem,” Sam says. He expects to have a rough time getting to sleep, usually has for the past four years—or nine, depending on how you look at it, fuck—but he drifts off pretty fast to the sound of Bucky’s breathing. 

Bucky offers to drive the next morning after they’ve downed their protein bars and water, but Sam says it’s fine, doesn’t mention that he thinks he’d reach ridiculously unhealthy levels of stress if confined to the passenger side. He also doesn’t mention that Bucky’s hair looks really good—he tries to think of a way to couch it in a comment about his own shampoo-choosing prowess, but they all sound like he’s desperate for Bucky’s attention or something. Which he isn’t.

Bucky, insufferable yet observant little shit that he is, must notice, because he starts running his fingers through his hair, putting it up in a messy bun and taking it back down, sliding the hair tie back onto his wrist, looking at Sam out the corner of his eye each time. 

“Are you seriously fishing for compliments, Barnes?” Sam asks about an hour down the road when Bucky undoes his third bun and somehow manages to casually flip his hair over his shoulder even though they’re in a car, for fuck’s sake. 

Bucky blinks at him, all fake innocence. “No idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Your hair looks nice, okay?” Sam says, rolling his eyes, and Bucky preens. “Yeah, whatever. It might not be a Bug, but this car’s still too small for your massive ego, old man.”

The next couple of days pass similarly: long stretches of road, shitty mattresses, gas station coffee, lighthearted bickering interspersed with genuine arguing and occasionally something a bit too close to what might be considered flirting, and sometimes, moments of startling domesticity. Bucky, bleary-eyed, passing Sam his coffee exactly as he takes it; Bucky fucking around on Sam’s phone as Sam drives; Bucky’s hand on Sam’s elbow, gently but emphatically telling him to switch seats and get some rest; both of them awake in a random motel at 3am, frustrated and exhausted but not alone. 

They’re barely an hour from the Canadian border when Bucky says casually, “Is it gonna be a problem that I don’t have a passport? Been a while since I’ve been an international criminal.”

“Shit,” Sam says, with feeling. He fishes his phone out of his pocket and drops it on Bucky’s lap. “Call whoever has the best chance of calling in a favor with the CBSA.” 

Bucky doesn’t need to ask his passcode by now.

“Wouldn’t that be you, Captain America?” he asks, and Sam snorts. He doesn’t remind Bucky that he hasn’t gone public with the news.

“I could maybe, _maybe_ get us into Canada. But back into the US? I think they’d rather keep us out.” 

“Fair enough,” Bucky says, and makes some calls.

They get through with the help of Banner and some good old-fashioned celebrity worship on the part of the CBSA agents, but Sam knows he’ll still be stressed until they get back into Washington state. It’s late, well past the self-storage place’s hours of operation, and it quickly becomes evident that they should’ve called ahead to make a hotel reservation; there’s a convention or a sports game or something, fuck if Sam knows, and it feels like every place in the city is booked solid. The internet isn’t helping much, so they decide to just walk into the nearest motel and hope for the best. 

“Yeah, we have two rooms left,” a very bored-looking concierge says, smacking their gum. Sam exhales a sigh of relief, which immediately gets caught in his throat when they continue, “Queen or double?” 

“Uh,” he says, and looks at Bucky.

“Do we look like we could both fit in a double, Wilson?” Bucky asks him, and turns a polite smile on the concierge. “Queen, please.” He elbows Sam. “Pay the nice person.” 

Sam rolls his eyes but holds out his debit card and tries not to think.

It doesn’t help: he still finds himself staring in the cracked bathroom mirror, having just spit out his toothpaste, more afraid of Bucky Barnes in Walmart boxer briefs than of any big bad he’s faced as an Avenger. 

He rinses his mouth and gets in bed. Bucky’s already in the side against the wall. 

He feels like too much in every axis—his limbs too close to Bucky’s, his readjusting of the sheets too disruptive, his breath and heartbeat too loud. He’s not one of those guys who are 98% toxic masculinity, god knows he cuddled with Steve plenty of times in freezing corners of bumfuck nowhere, and he got over whatever hangups he might have around a lack of personal space where Bucky is involved after the trip in the Bug, but, god. God, it’s intimate. It’s something he’s not prepared to deal with wanting yet.

Sam is still laying there frozen when Bucky shifts sleepily and says his name quietly.

“Yeah?”

Bucky pauses. “Why am I here?” he asks, not insecure but genuinely curious. “Why’d you wait to see whether I had a place in mind to fuck off to when you knew your shit was in Vancouver?”

Sam lays there for a minute, trying to trace his own thought process at the time. It had been intentional, yeah, but also instinctive. He just… hadn’t wanted Bucky to be alone. 

“I spent two years searching for you,” he says, and the words hang heavy in the air between them. “And I’ll do it again if I need to. But I’d rather be there with you all along.” 

Bucky’s breath catches, and Sam listens as he exhales heavily, and breathes, and breathes, and eventually falls asleep, proof of his presence—not dead, not missing, not a ghost pieced together from censored files and blurry photographs—echoing through the room as he snores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on tumblr @campgender !


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a lot fluffier than my original outline was prepared for but that’s what i need right now so we’re rolling with it
> 
> if you want to skip the sex, stop at “Sam puts one hand on the back of Bucky’s neck.” and pick back up at the last paragraph

When Sam wakes up, Bucky’s hair is wet and a Sharpie rests between his teeth. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, squinting at the formerly white Walmart bro tank held in front of him. Geometric patterns are traced along every inch of the fabric, lines twisting and weaving together, painstakingly precise.

“Looks good,” Sam says, voice rough with sleep, swinging his legs out of the bed and forcing himself to not be uncomfortable with the fact that he’s in his boxer briefs while Bucky’s fully dressed.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, smiling, quick and genuine. “Steve’s the artist, but, you know, I picked up a thing or two. Needed a hobby between bouts of debilitating paranoia.”

“Makes sense,” Sam says, keeping his voice neutral. “I’m gonna shower, and then we can get going.”

Bucky hands Sam his favorite of the protein bars, which is just the least tasteless of them, when he folds himself into the driver’s seat. “Last one,” Bucky says, and Sam tries so hard not to look at him funny when he says thanks.

“Alright,” Sam says, hitting the steering wheel lightly, trying to brace himself, “let’s do this.”

Bucky demonstrates an innate talent of locating the most annoying Top 40 hits one after the other without being remotely familiar with a single artist on the list, and Sam practices that patience they were always telling him about in counseling school. He misses it, bizarrely, staying up to an ungodly hour finishing a term paper and then waking up early to put in hours at the VA, breaking every tenet of sleep science that he’d then spit out onto an exam. Things weren’t easy then, for sure, and he knows he owes his past self enough respect to not minimize that struggle, but they sure were less goddamn _weird,_ years before the bizarre chain of events that connect Captain America lapping him on his morning run to him _being Captain America._

Christ. 

“I don’t blame you about the business cards,” Sam says out of nowhere, trying and failing to tune out what he hopes to god is not Ariana Grande. He half expects Fury to materialize and demand his car back for the disrespect.

“How’s that?” Bucky asks, Sam’s phone chirping in his hand, and Sam isn’t sure if he genuinely doesn’t know how to turn off the sound effects on apps or if he keeps them on intentionally just to be an asshole.

“You said Steve tried to get you to check out the VA therapy,” Sam clarifies. “And like, I’m the one who encouraged him to go, I’m glad it helped him and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, just. I get it, to whatever extent I _can_ get it. They aren’t exactly prepared to handle people like us.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and leaves it at that for a bit, but he adds a few minutes later, still looking at Sam’s phone, “Thanks for not judging me about it.”

“Sure thing,” Sam says. “I _am_ judging you for your technological incompetence, though. You’re like a grandma with that thing, man.” Bucky pinches his cheek for that, which Sam figures he deserves.

They pull up to the storage place soon enough. Sam punches the code from Fury’s index card into the keypad, parks as close as he can get to the unit (why couldn’t Fury have sprung for outside access, god) and goes inside. They find it about a third of the way down, and Sam crouches to stick the key in the padlock. The door is heavier than it looks.

“Help me get this up, will you?” Sam asks, pulling at the handle, and Bucky laughs.

“What, no super strength?” He lifts it easily, holding it steady above their heads with one hand until he’s sure it’s locked in place. 

“We’ve got a problem,” Sam says immediately upon looking in.

“No shit, Wilson,” Bucky says, blowing a piece of hair out of his face. “God, what is this, everything you own?”

“Probably,” Sam admits, folding his arms.

“Well, it ain’t all fitting in the car,” Bucky says, surveying the piles of crap covered in five years’ worth of dust.

“Yeah, I picked up on that, thanks.”

Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth a bit on his heels. “What’s the plan?”

Sam sighs. He can’t see any way around it. “I guess we go through it, if you’re up for that.”

“Born ready,” Bucky says, clapping his hands together. He looks strangely excited, to be honest, the glint in his eyes like the one he gets before a sparring match. Sam sets his shoulders and steps in.

Bucky, it turns out, is weirdly incredible at organizing shit. 

“Never in my life would I have guessed this from the state of the backseat,” Sam says, shaking his head disbelievingly, and Bucky grins.

“Someone had to keep our shit together when Steve and I shared a place,” he replies. “Couldn’t afford for him to misplace any bills under his stacks of crap.”

“He ever paint on any of them?” Sam asks, trying not to laugh, and Bucky groans.

“Not the bills, thank Christ, but his prescriptions, once. That was fun to explain the next time I picked up his meds.” He rolls his eyes, grinning fondly at the memory before his face sets, every angle a few degrees off from normal.

Sam tosses a broken lampshade in the direction of the Trash pile, clearly labeled on the concrete floor with a piece of masking tape Bucky had produced out of seemingly nowhere and the Sharpie from that morning’s shirt doodles. There’s also a Keep pile, further into the hall, and a Donate pile against the locked unit across from them. Bucky is masterfully repacking the Keep stuff into crates in the way that best maximizes space. He’s got a whole system, stepping back to size everything up, then methodically rolling up clothes, stacking books according to height and width, and wrapping breakables in bedsheets.

It feels oddly domestic, for a moment, and Sam looks away.

“I ever tell you about the time Steve and Nat showed up on my doorstep saying I was the only person they could trust?” he asks. “Didn’t even have the decency to let me finish my orange juice before involving me in a handful of felonies.” 

He pauses for dramatic effect. “We’d met, like, three times before then.”

Bucky practically doubles over, he’s laughing so hard. “God, Steve’s lucky you’re a good man, Wilson,” he says, and Sam feels all warm inside. “I am, too,” Bucky might add quietly, but he might not’ve; the air itself is loud here, all cheap climate control and ambient traffic noises. Still, Sam smiles softly to himself.

He goes still a moment later, though, unwrapping the tissue paper from whatever object he’s lifted from the latest box and realizing he’s holding his old Air Force medals. 

“Which pile do you think this falls under?” he asks, and something in his voice must give him away, because Becky’s looking softly at him when he glances up.

“Whichever you want,” Bucky says, and the honesty in it about breaks Sam in half. “We can always call the Smithsonian,” he adds, grinning, “ask if they feel like expanding their Cap exhibit.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Sam says, laughing, but he sets them down in Keep, not Donate, and Bucky doesn’t comment on it.

At some point, Bucky hauls off the contents of the Trash and Donate piles so far and returns with lunch. Bucky carefully takes Sam’s photos out of the frames and keeps just the pictures to maximize space, folds sweatshirts smaller than Sam would’ve thought possible. A couple trips to the dump later, Bucky carries the Keep boxes to the car two at a time, citing efficiency when he clearly just wants to show off, and Sam watches his arm muscles flex in the tank top.

It’s 10pm when they’ve finally got the unit emptied and are on the road, deciding to try their luck at the same motel as last night, and Sam is hungry and exhausted and sore. He tips his forehead against the window glass and immediately regrets it. Movies never acknowledge how fucking annoying all those vibrations are. 

He turns his head toward Bucky, instead. “You know I would’ve skipped the funeral with you, right?” 

Bucky rolls to a stop at a yellow light. Puts the turn signal on. Looks at Sam, and it might be a little tentative or it might just be Sam’s own tiredness clouding his expression.

“Yeah,” Bucky says after a minute. “I guess I did.”

“Only reason Steve got me there is because he said you were gonna be,” Sam says quietly, his eyes drifting shut. He’s got a headache. Dehydration, maybe. He sits like that for the rest of the ride.

*

Sam wakes up in the same bed two days in a row for the first time in almost a week or over five years, depending on your perspective. And with the same person next to him, too—that hasn’t happened in even longer, not since he was on the road with Steve. At least the motel, shitty as it is, is significantly better quality than some of the hostels they’d crashed in.

“Hey,” Sam says, still half-asleep, and Bucky shifts so that Sam can see it when he raises an eyebrow at him. “You know that thought experiment? The one about teleportation?”

“Nope,” Bucky says. Sam has no idea whether teleportation even existed as a fantasy in the forties. Probably, right?

“Well, it goes like this,” he says, “if you're taken apart at one location, atom by atom, and reassembled at another, are you still you? They're different atoms, but in the same configuration, the same blueprint, so are you a different person?”

“‘From dust you were created,’” Bucky quotes, “‘and to dust you shall return.’ You're asking if it's the same dust?”

Sort of. Sam shrugs, nods.

“Don't see that it matters,” Bucky says. “Sounds like it'd hurt, right, being taken apart and put together like that. You wouldn't be the same person either way. Couldn't be.” Sam's seen him upset about it plenty of times, grieving, screaming in the middle of the night—or worse, silent—but this isn't like that. Bucky's looking at him, not inside himself, not at a blank wall twenty years ago, and his expression is gentle. Peaceful. Sam kind of wants to shake himself, remind himself he hasn’t really known Bucky that long, not Bucky as he is now, but then again, they spent five years dead together, and surely that counts for something. It has to; otherwise what the hell are you supposed to do with it? Where do you put it down?

They turned to dust and reappeared in a world where Bucky looks at him like that, soft and tender, like he did at Stark’s funeral, and where Sam looks back and thinks things he’s stopped wishing he wouldn’t. 

“Oh,” Bucky says, and stretches, “there’s a song I want to play for you.” He’s wearing a shit-eating grin, but his hair is still damp from his shower last night and he’s in a clean, blank bro tank and Sam is so calmly happy right now that he’s startled by it, so he doesn’t even sigh when Bucky reaches over him to grab Sam’s phone from the bedside table. 

Bucky pokes at the screen for a second, and Sam tilts his head, anticipatory. He isn’t sure what to expect, but then—he isn’t sure whether to grin, or duck his head, or hit Bucky with a pillow. The opening notes of “Let’s Get It On” continue playing from his phone’s speakers, unconcerned.

“This is the thanks I get for introducing you to real music, huh?” Sam asks, and Bucky laughs, but even though it looks genuine, it’s also strangely vulnerable. 

“I've been really tryin', baby, tryin' to hold back this feeling for so long,” Marvin Gaye sings, and Sam watches Bucky blink at him, inches apart on the bed. “And if you feel like I feel, baby,” the song continues, and Sam swallows.

“Are you coming on to me, Barnes?” Sam asks, but his voice is too soft for the words, not too serious but distinctly not teasing. 

“Depends,” Bucky says, and thank god, he doesn’t look terrified.

Sam’s mouth is dry. “On what?” 

Bucky just looks at him for a long, slow moment, and then he laughs to himself, just barely, quiet and disbelieving, like, _I can’t believe I’m doing this._ Sam knows the feeling. “On how you’d feel about it.”

 _Something like sanctified,_ Sam thinks, almost dizzy with it. He just nods, slow, twice. “Good. I—yeah. Good.”

“Good,” Bucky echoes, grinning. “Well, maybe I am, Wilson. Who knows,” but he’s not casual enough for it, nowhere near careless, and then he’s cupping Sam’s face in his palms, gentle and intentional, whispering _Is this okay, Sam, can I,_ and Sam is saying _Yes,_ breathing it over and over against Bucky’s lips as he closes the space between them and kisses him. 

Sam puts one hand on the back of Bucky’s neck. He wants to put the other on Bucky’s waist, badly, but they’re both in their underwear, having decided pajamas were an unnecessary expense, and he’s not sure where exactly Bucky wants this to go tonight, despite the song choice. He’s a little surprised by how sure he is about where he’d be interested in this going. 

The song has changed by the time they pause for breath. “Do you, uh—do you want…” 

“To get it on?” Sam asks, raising an eyebrow.

Bucky grins at him, and Sam wonders if this is the look Steve used to talk about, too smooth for his own good. Then he makes a conscious decision to stop thinking about Steve right now, about any of it. Bucky’s still got a hand on Sam’s face, idly tracing his cheekbone. “I’ve never been accused of being subtle.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “I do.”

Bucky just looks at him for a minute, suaveness falling away into a soft shock. “I do, too.”

Bucky pauses, like he isn’t sure where to go from here, so Sam settles on a fairly open-ended question, hoping it’ll maybe help him figure that out. “Anything I shouldn’t do?” 

Bucky tilts his head, thoughtful but thankfully not concerned. “Don’t, like, move any part of me, or hold anything down.” He pauses to think for a second. “Touching my hair is okay, but don’t pull it. Other than that, I’ll let you know.”

Sam nods. “Sounds good. I don’t like, uh, certain language, if it becomes relevant, but there’s not anywhere I don’t want to be touched.”

“That so?” Bucky asks, and Sam rolls his eyes.

“You know what I meant. But if you’re offering…”

“I’m offering,” Bucky says, and it’s comfortable, not heavy or formal, but he’s serious.

Sam spreads his legs, and Bucky shifts to kneel between them and kisses him.

Sam lets himself touch Bucky’s hair, and he mentally pats himself on the back for his choices of product because it’s smooth and soft in his fingers. Bucky’s got just a bit of stubble, rough against Sam’s neck when he kisses it, and Sam runs his hands up and down Bucky’s arms, traces nonsense patterns on his biceps. 

“It’s okay to touch this arm, right?” Sam checks when they break apart for air, and Bucky nods.

“I thought about taking it off, but that’d make it hard to do this.” He’s propped up over Sam on his palms, and bends to kiss him like he’s doing a push-up. Sam laughs through the kiss, then gasps when Bucky’s tongue touches his. Bucky shifts to nudge a thigh between Sam’s legs and Sam makes an embarrassing noise. Bucky grins and kisses his forehead, of all things.

“Sam,” he says, unfairly pretty, all eyelashes and languid smiles, “can I suck your cock?”

Sam tips his head back, closes his eyes for a second. “ _Fuck._ ”

Bucky looks incredibly smug. And still pretty, damn him. “Is that a yes?”

Sam pushes lightly at his shoulder. “Yes, it’s a yes.” He pauses. “Have you, uh, been with a trans guy before?”

“Nah, but I did my research,” Bucky says, and Sam raises an eyebrow at him. Bucky doesn’t elaborate, though, just smirks and hooks his thumbs in the elastic of Sam’s boxers, pulls them down his thighs, and puts his mouth on him.

Holy _fuck._ Sam doesn’t say to give his regards to the research sources, but it’s a close thing. Bucky’s _tongue,_ god, and he moans around Sam’s cock like he’s getting off on this, too, and Sam’s so close within only a few minutes. 

“You gonna come for me, baby?” Bucky asks, rubbing him lazily, and Sam gasps and does.

“Oh, my god,” Sam manages, flopped back on the mattress, still trying to catch his breath as Bucky kisses his collarbone. Music’s still coming from his phone where it’s safely stashed on the nightstand, something lilting and smooth that Sam doesn’t recognize. 

Bucky looks up at him and smiles at the corner of his mouth, surprisingly shy. “Yeah?”

“ _Yeah._ ”

Bucky kisses his shoulder. “Good.”

“What do you want?” Sam asks after a few minutes of playing with Bucky’s hair. Bucky flushes and visibly steels himself.

“Will you fuck me?”

Sam swears. Bucky immediately looks apologetic, and Sam shakes his head. “No, no, it’s not bad. It’s just… I can’t, because, uh, my dick is buried somewhere in the car.”

For a second, Bucky looks like he’s about to root through every crate and garbage bag they’ve wedged into the vehicle, but Sam starts kissing his chest, and he lays back down. “Okay,” he says, taking Sam’s hand, kissing his palm, and guiding it to his spread legs, “then can you just…”

“God,” Sam says, feeling too hot in his skin, like he could sublimate ice with a touch, “I want to, but. We also don’t have any lube.” 

Bucky looks vaguely contemplative for a second, which Sam shuts down immediately. “Absolutely not.”

“1940s guys made do,” Bucky says, laughing, and Sam rolls his eyes.

“Some other time, okay?” he says, moving to kiss Bucky’s neck. He’s grateful a half-second later that he can’t see Bucky’s reaction to him blithely suggesting this will happen again. Instead of thinking too hard about that, he rests his hand low on Bucky’s stomach. “Is this okay?”

At Bucky’s response of _God, yes,_ Sam wraps his hand around his cock and strokes him until he gasps just right, until he tips his head back and murmurs endearing nonsense, until he comes. 

Sam runs a washcloth under warm water, cleans them up, and makes a mental note to leave a larger tip than usual for the housekeeper. He moves to get dressed, but Bucky holds out a hand, glinting in the sunlight flickering in through the shitty curtains, and Sam takes it, lets Bucky pull him back into bed.

The world ended—or half of it, anyway—and Steve is a stranger and Nat doesn’t have so much as a headstone, and everything Sam owns is in the car parked behind this motel in Vancouver, and they’re alive. Bucky, who he followed across the earth, who he escaped death with, is alive, and kissed him, and when Sam smiles at him, he doesn’t have to force it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so like, i didn’t think about how they wouldn’t have a dental dam either until i’d already written the scene, and i didn’t want to just delete the whole thing, so. whoops. practice safer sex folks


End file.
